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economy of Italy

...Middle Eastern oil. The dynamic policies of Enrico Mattei, president of ENI (Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi, the state-owned energy group), were central to this development. The petroleum company AGIP (
Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli), which became a division of ENI in 1953, discovered natural gas in the Po valley and sold it at low prices to industry. Labour was inexpensive, as rural migrants...

history of Eni

Eni is an outgrowth of Agip (
Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli), an oil and gas agency set up by the Italian fascist government in the 1920s. In 1952 Enrico Mattei, a former resistance fighter, persuaded the Italian postwar government to coordinate the Agip gas and oil holdings in the new Eni; descendants of Agip are now the exploration and production and the refining and marketing divisions of...

role of Mattei

...Italy. He was decorated for those efforts and became active in the Christian Democratic Party in 1945. With his party in control of the government, Mattei was made northern commissioner of Agip (
Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli), a state-owned petroleum company, and given explicit instructions to liquidate the company and sell its assets to private (including foreign-owned) oil companies....

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